In addition to Robin's comments I found the motivating factor of Frey's
paper to be weak. I take it that his main complaint is that referee's
force authors to prostitute themselves by making changes the authors
think are wrong.
I personally have never experienced this problem and I would be
surprised if many people have, although I am willing to be enlightened.
To be sure, I have had papers rejected for bad reasons and sometimes I
have made changes to satisfy referees that I thought were not necessary
but I have never been asked to change a conclusion or to write something
I thought was false. In a few cases, referees have actually helped me
to improve the paper! (Yes, this does sometimes happen!).
Now perhaps Frey is saying that the problem is that authors must
write their papers in a certain way even in order to have any hope of
getting published. Now certainly this is true - the profession demands
a particulary style of paper especially in the top journals. I happen
to think that much of what the profession demands is unnecessary,
boring, absurd, and counter-productive but what has this to do with the
way journals are refereed? Almost nothing.
Alex
--
Dr. Alexander Tabarrok
Vice President and Director of Research
The Independent Institute
100 Swan Way
Oakland, CA, 94621-1428
Tel. 510-632-1366, FAX: 510-568-6040
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
